Armies

[Parkillous]

News Flash: People Die.

 

You think in a real life when a country attacks another they say "oh sorry, hes our special merchant, you cant kill him otherwise we cant buy bread". This is exactly why cities need many more people, so that the loss of one person wont bring the entire world to a sudden halt.

 

Do you know how much of your beloved 'role playing' is destroyed when, for example, you find texts talking of akaviri ARMIES invading in the north... and you epic adventure is brought to an anti climax with the "here you go, fend of two ferocious ogres and the world will be saved".

 

This is not to say NPC's must die off like flies... that is the creatures jobs and the reason why they respawn... other people will actually become veterans who play not only a part in a solitary part important to the player.

 

To be honest RPG need tonnes and tonnes of "units" like rts. Why do you think mmo are so damn popular? im thinking because they bring this goal one step closer to being fulfilled... but the sacrifice in gameplay is too significant for me personally to play an mmo over oblivion.

 

Sooner or later, when technology is at the right level, these armies will be in the game. The reason they are left out now is not because of some bullpoo individualism, its because they cant do it, which i strongly presume you know. This is why im saying they should stop focusing on things like graphics, so the process of getting armies involved is hastened... honeslty if I want to know about how a blade of grass moves and reflects sun light ill go outside, or better yet read The Lord of The Rings.

 

 

Anyways, out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea of what CPU, Graphics card/s and how many G of RAM you would need to run a 50 v 50 battle in oblivion on, say, 50 fps :P :D ?

[Vagrant0]

Umm... No. Nice rant, but RPGs aren't usually about mass slaughter, using armies, or any of that. They are about individual efforts in both usual and unusual circumstances. MMO's aren't RPGs, most don't even have a consistant storyline, they're by and large just a game where you sit around leveling, camping items, and trading those items for stuff you want. RPGs were never "popular", stop basing your views on the convoluted RPGs that you see being mass marketed and go play some pen and paper D&D. Adding rts elements won't necessarily make a game better, if anything it makes it worse as they're trying to do too much within a single engine, or spending time where it may not be needed.

 

Anyways, out of curiosity, does anyone have an idea of what CPU, Graphics card/s and how many G of RAM you would need to run a 50 v 50 battle in oblivion on, say, 50 fps :P :D ?

It's hard to tell if Oblivion was capable of utilizing multi-core processors or not since you can't alt+tab out of the game without killing it. But if it supported up to 8 cores, imagine you'd need atleast a Quad Core 3.4ghz (not on the market), 16 gb ram, and about 4 high speed, decent memory (more than 728) PCI express cards crosslinked (never find a motherboard that would have the room). In short, not possible or worth the expense. Even still there would have to be atleast a handful of people with such systems to make it worth your while to make a mod like that. It'd take you atleast a few weeks just trying to get the AI to work right, as said, NPCs don't use any sort of groupthink, so can easily cluster up, start hitting eachother, or just stand there oblivious. Which means that you'd likely have to script such things, and that is a a serious task even when you know how to do it.

 

But hey, there's nothing keeping you from putting 20 NPCs in an area, ten of one faction, ten of another, and using a spell or something which causes the factions to hate eachother.

[Parkillous]

You would be suprised how many people who play RPG's want huge armies... and I bet you that as soon as they have the technology for it, they will put them in.

[Tiberiu911]

You would be suprised how many people who play RPG's want huge armies... and I bet you that as soon as they have the technology for it, they will put them in.

 

Could you name me 10 people (I want names and proof*) that actually want that on a RPG? I wouldn't, I dont see the point. What I would like, is if you where at the head of an army and simply giving orders on the battlefield or something. NwN2 did a pretty good job on that, raising an army and all.

 

*EDIT: Spelling corrected.

[ninja_lord666]

Could you name me 10 people (I want names and proff) that actually want that on a RPG? I wouldn't, I dont see the point. What I would like, is if you where at the head of an army and simply giving orders on the battlefield or something. NwN2 did a pretty good job on that, raising an army and all.

In Servant of the Dawn you lead an army and give orders. It's rather small as that is not what the mod is about, but you do lead an army.

 

Edit: BTW, I think you meant *proof*

[Vagrant0]

Beside the point, it just doesn't usually work too well combining rts and actual rpg within a single engine. MMO's don't count since there isn't much if any AI involved, the other characters involved are controlled by a different person, and the game itself only needs to keep track of where they are (most don't even do this too well when more than 20 people are involved, even FPS don't do this too well) and what they're doing.

 

Going back to the original question. Oblivion as it is just isn't setup to be that dynamic. As is they dumbed down the AI because that dynamic element often led to problems. Once a shopkeeper or someone else dies in the game, they stay dead. Having a system where shopkeepers, or other civilians would be replaced (like in fable) would have taken too much effort, or would have looked too generic (like fable). As an example, make a new game and kill off everyone in skingrad and chorrol (using kill command). See how much it ends up affecting the rest of your game. There just aren't enough fodder NPCs available in the game to leave anything playable afterward.

 

Also as you may have noticed, those army mods still don't have the NPCs following you acting like part of a team. Instead they all stomp around at your heels, usually getting in the way.

 

However this thread has inspired me to setup some sort of onslaught area where I should hopefully be able to create some intresting situations full of combat. For now, It's just a fairly large L shaped town with alot of platforms and areas to ambush. I havn't gotten to flushing out any of the NPC details yet, but think I'll be doing the base town as an esm then having a few esp that offer different options or something.

[Tiberiu911]

I have already palyed a hybrid between RTS and RPG, wasn't so great (you can get the demo off Steam, forgot how the actual game was called though...).

 

As Vagrant said, NPC's don't have any strategic intelligence at all. Ever tried a couple companion mods? Remember what happens when you have 3-4 with you?

 

Don't forget traps Vagrant! There's nothing funier than to watch a bunch of NPC's fall into traps.

[Vagrant0]

Don't forget traps Vagrant! There's nothing funier than to watch a bunch of NPC's fall into traps.

Honestly, even setting up the worldspace and the few interiors I have is time consuming. I still havn't even started on any of the NPC stuff. Not sure if I just want stuff to start spawning when the player gets near (easier task, but not too interesting), or if I want the player to actually setup positions of various NPCs, then have the NPCs start fighting when something is triggered (more interesting, but very hard if I want NPCs to form groups, or behave with any intelligence). I'll probably go with the later for starters, just to see what can be done and how well it works.

[Parkillous]

Im not trying to say Oblivion needs armies or that there will be armies, i know it cant handle it... but once the technology is available, not in 2007, and they have good ai and have run of the mill pcs that can handle armies like that, they will put them in.

 

Can you honestly say being, say, a seargent in a war and ordering your men around and fighting against an army with your men is not ROLE playing... im pretty sure your filling a role as seargent in an army. Think of it as a bigger, non linear/scripted version of lord of the rings on console.

 

btw do you really want me to name 10 people i know, that you would have no clue existed... whats the point of that, you could just say "how do i know they even play it" or some poo.

 

Heres a question: If you had a computer with unlimited resources (ram, cpu etc)... at the battle outside bruma at the main gate... would you rather take part in the fight currently in game... or would you like hundreds of city guard to line up, with archers behind and have hordes upon hordes of daedra pour out of the gate?

[Vagrant0]

Heres a question: If you had a computer with unlimited resources (ram, cpu etc)... at the battle outside bruma at the main gate... would you rather take part in the fight currently in game... or would you like hundreds of city guard to line up, with archers behind and have hordes upon hordes of daedra pour out of the gate?

Honestly, wouldn't want that. Yeah, having more than 5 things pop out of a gate would be a bit more climactic, but given that the game itself is based primarily around the player fighting, and not just sitting back ordering people around, having anything like that just wouldn't fit. A single instance thing like that would actually seem pretty damn odd. If the game was designed more around that sort of thing, it would probably be lacking even more in the solo exploration elements, and instead be more of a 1st person RTS. Why bother spending all those hours raising skills and gathering equipment if someone else is going to finish the big fight for you (wait, they did that already). If you want to be upset about something, complain about how RTS at this point really seems to lack the depth and creativity you want. Most RTS end up being purely about gathering alot of small/medium units and just zerging (a term from a RTS meaning to swarm en masse) your opponent before they zerg you. Thanks, but I'd rather not have that kind of simplistic trash in my games. I prefer depth, and the sort of strategy that doesn't rely on sheer numbers, hence the reason why I havn't bought a RTS in the past 10 years or so.

 

And technically, it isn't roleplaying since you don't become the eyes, ears, and hands of the general in RTS, you simply issue orders without much reflection or internal progression. You aren't "in the thick of it" so much as "looking at things and making decisions". The player in a RTS is basically a 2 dimentional character, just singleminded conquest without much concern for motivation. Now Oblivion isn't much of a RPG, so the difference isn't so great. But anyone who's played a good RPG, one where you get into the character, can agree that RTS don't come close to being roleplaying games.

 

Regardless, Oblivion is closer to FPS than a RTS by any measure. Arguing that it "needs" this or that is moot. The game isn't designed for it, the game's creators didn't care to put forth the time and effort into making anything even close, and given their current trends, they probably won't try to do so in the future. I would rather have a game world that is more rich and dynamic than one where they try combining even more stuff, and distract even further from what made morrowind the game it was. If you want a RTS, there are several out there, most of them suck, but that's how things are, go learn to make your own. Being able to find 10 people only means that there are others who really should just go bug some of the RTS designers for more depth and fewer starcraft/command and conquer clones.